Seventy years ago, the United Nations was created from the ashes of the Second World War. Seven decades later, in Paris, nations have united in the face of another threat – the threat to life as we know it due to a rapidly warming (...)
The horrific war in Syria continues to worsen and bleed beyond its borders. A cold calculation seems to be taking hold: that little can be done except to arm the parties and watch the conflict rage. The international community must not abandon the (...)
Each year at this time, leaders gather at United Nations Headquarters in New York to assess the state of the world. This year, I used the occasion to sound the alarm about our direction as a human family.
We are living through a period of profound (...)
NEW YORK: Growing up as a child during the Korean War, I knew poverty first hand. I saw it around me every day; I lived it. One of my earliest memories is walking up a muddy track into the mountains to escape the fighting, my village burning behind (...)
NEW YORK: Late next month, a child will be born — the 7th billion citizen of planet Earth. We will never know the circumstances into which he or she was born. We do know that the baby will enter a world of vast and unpredictable change — (...)
Last Saturday, July 9, the Republic of South Sudan joined the community of nations. Foreign dignitaries converged on its capital, Juba, to watch the new country raise its flag and inaugurate a first president, Salva Kiir Mayardit.
For the more (...)
GENEVA: As the United Nations Conference on Disarmament begins a seven-week session in Geneva, its future is on the line. Whereas countries and civil-society initiatives are on the move, the Conference has stagnated. Its credibility — indeed, its (...)
NEW YORK: Fortune has not been kind to Haiti. The pain and suffering arising from last year's earthquake was already enormous, and has since been compounded by Hurricane Tomas and an outbreak of cholera. Now there is growing tension surrounding the (...)
NEW YORK: At Uganda's largest AIDS clinic, I recently witnessed a remarkable celebration of life. The performers were a troupe of young African singers, drummers and dancers, ranging in age from roughly eight to 28. Rarely have I been so profoundly (...)
Mother's Day is upon us in many countries around the world. Children of all ages will give flowers, make breakfast, call home.
This is as it should be. On my travels around the world, particularly to its poorest and most troubled places, I have (...)
A few weeks ago, traveling in Kazakhstan, I had the sobering experience of standing at Ground Zero. This was the notorious test site at Semipalatinsk, where the Soviet Union detonated 456 nuclear weapons between 1947 and 1989. Apart from a circle of (...)
Mother Earth–-our only home-–is under pressure. We are making progressively unreasonable demands on her, and she is showing the strain. For all of human history we have depended on nature's bounty for sustenance, well-being and development. Too (...)
For the first time in history, more people live in cities and towns than in rural areas. In a parallel trend, the burden of world poverty is also shifting from sparsely populated rural areas to densely populated cities. By mid-century, urban (...)
Autism is a complex and inadequately understood disability with a wide range of manifestations. Children and adults with autism--and, indeed, those living with disabilities in general--have a double burden. In addition to the daily challenges of (...)
Water is the source of life and the link that binds all living beings on this planet. It is connected directly to all our United Nations goals: improved maternal and child health and life expectancy, women's empowerment, food security, sustainable (...)
No country can afford to ignore the lessons of the earthquakes in Chile and Haiti. We cannot stop such disasters from happening. But we can dramatically reduce their impact, if the right disaster risk reduction measures are taken in advance.
A week (...)
Gender equality and women's empowerment are fundamental to the global mission of the United Nations to achieve equal rights and dignity for all. This is a matter of basic human rights, as enshrined in our founding charter and the Universal (...)
NEW YORK: For four decades, Ledra Street in the heart of Nicosia had been a symbol of a divided Cyprus. And then, two years ago this April, the wall that split the capital into north and south was opened. Slowly, people who had not mingled for 44 (...)
The theme of this year's commemoration at UN offices around the world is the legacy of survival.
Countless men, women and children suffered the horrors of the ghettos and Nazi death camps, yet somehow survived.
All of them carry a crucial message (...)
THE disaster in Haiti shows once again something that we, as human beings, have always known: that even amid the worst devastation, there is always hope.
I saw that for myself this week in Port-au- Prince. The UN suffered its single greatest loss in (...)
The disaster in Haiti shows once again something that we, as human beings, have always known: that even amid the worst devastation, there is always hope.
I saw that for myself this week in Port au Prince. The UN suffered its single greatest loss in (...)
The disaster in Haiti shows once again something that we, as human beings, have always known: that even amid the worst devastation, there is always hope.
I saw that for myself this week in Port au Prince. The UN suffered its single greatest loss (...)
New York: Every September, the world's leaders gather at the United Nations to reaffirm our founding Charter - our faith in fundamental principles of peace, justice, human rights, and equal opportunity for all. We assess the state of the world, (...)
NEW YORK: The destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 marked an end and a beginning. The close of the Second World War ushered in a Cold War, with a precarious peace based on the threat of mutually assured destruction.
Today the world is at (...)
YANGON - All politics are local, goes the old aphorism. Yet today, we can say that all problems are global. As world leaders meet at the G-8 Summit in Italy, they will have to update their politics to grapple with problems that none of them can (...)